Guk's Gunpowder

On the way back, Guk kept mulling over the strange things those two Square Faces had said. It seemed like a stupid thing to do, but he felt it might not have been complete nonsense. Maybe there was the tiniest possibility...

But the thing was, Guk did not think of himself as a Mekboy. At best, he had a little Mekboy stuff in him, nowhere near enough to call it talent. And relying on Agum and Idea Guy?

The two of them had wasted half a barrel of gunpowder and made nothing at all.

Thinking of that, Guk decided to do it himself.

After returning to Biting Blade Fortress, Guk made a few simple arrangements, then headed straight for Blackstone Fort with his guards and retainers. He did not even stop by Red Eye Fortress. Though that place was bigger, he still preferred the place where he had started out.

The Big Guns and gunpowder returned with him as well. Naz was a restless fellow, so Guk kept him at his side.

Guk left Grak to guard Red Eye Fortress and sent Bucktooth to manage Blood Skull Fort. Though the guy had lost an arm, the Blood Skull Tribe had several decent Mad Docs. They kept some regeneration Squigs that could supposedly regrow severed limbs.

Guk left Aluba at Biting Blade Fortress. Nobody was better than Weirdboyz at dealing with Green Horn, and with him there, Guk believed there would be no problems for a while. As for Blood Fang, Guk only stationed a few Gray-Helm boys there to keep order. That place had always been fairly peaceful.

Of course, these bosses sent out elsewhere would not remain in their posts forever. Guk was not that stupid. He would periodically send other subordinates to replace those stationed outside, lest long-term command away from home breed ambitions they should not have...

After making all those arrangements, Guk took a group of Mekboys and several barrels of gunpowder and shut himself inside the fortress.

This went on for more than ten days and nights.

"Damn it!"

Shoveling the gunpowder on the table back into its barrel, Guk slumped into his chair, looking utterly dead inside. Boys lay sprawled all around him, sleeping soundly without a scrap of armor on them.

He had racked his brains and tried every possible combination. He had even used Squig dung, yet still achieved nothing. Guk felt deeply frustrated.

"What is it? What the hell is it?"

He looked outside. It was already night. The boys who had worked alongside him could no longer hold on and had passed out. More than ten days of nonstop thinking was an enormous burden even for tireless Orks.

Even Guk's eyelids were beginning to droop as crushing exhaustion battered his mind.

"Sleep first."

Laboriously pushing himself out of the chair, Guk staggered over to his "big bed," a heap of randomly piled beast hides, fell heavily onto it, and completely lost consciousness.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

In his dream, countless voices swirled around him—angry, longing, joyful—but without exception, they were all rough Ork roars. They tore at Guk's consciousness and dragged him into a deep vortex.

There, countless lights and shadows intertwined and flowed past one another. Unfathomable mist wrapped around everything, and his sense of self blurred away.

"Fire!"

"War Fire!"

The sudden whisper made Guk's sense of self solid again, but he remained unaware of all else, until...

"Ah!"

Guk cried out and jolted upright, startling all the boys around him, including Agum. They scrambled up from the ground.

"Boss, what happened?"

Agum cautiously asked. The boss's expression was strange, and none of the boys dared make a sound.

"I know! I know now!"

Guk ignored him. Shouting words that left the other boys utterly confused, he strode rapidly toward the gate. By then, daylight had fully broken.

"That! The black stuff!"

"And that! The stuff beside the dung pit! Stinks? Shut up and scrape it off for me!"

"This, this, this... Yeah, this one!"

Very soon, the entire fortress was thrown into chaos. Like a madman, Guk scavenged every sort of strange material. When he returned to the workshop, the guards following behind him were carrying a huge pile of stuff.

"What's this?"

Agum picked up a Squig. It was milky white, limp, and gave off a strange smell.

"Glue Squig. Move aside, you're in the way."

Roughly shoving aside the boys crowding around the workbench, Guk buried himself in a heap of completely unrelated scraps. The boys watched their boss in astonishment. After all, Guk had never seemed like a qualified Mekboy.

"Hammer."

Skillfully handling all kinds of tools, Guk slipped into an unconscious focus. He ignored everything around him, his hands carrying out operations whose principles he did not understand at all—crushing, mixing, stirring this and that...

A terrible fire burned in his eyes. Agum recognized that fire. It was the sign that a Mekboy was about to make something work. Some premonition from deep within his mind made him start working too.

The workshop grew busy. Boys argued loudly, Snotlings scurried everywhere, and smoke of every color rose into the air, making everything hazy and surreal.

"Like this!"

Pouring the dried lumps from the pot into a bowl and crushing them hard, Guk let out an excited roar, drawing all the nearby boys over.

Agum lifted the bowl and sniffed it, then nodded.

"I reckon this smell works!"

The Mekboys took turns smelling it and all agreed. Guk called over some Snotlings, poured the crushed brown grains into a jar, sealed it tightly, inserted a fuse, and told a Snotling to light it.

"Hurry up!"

The trembling Snotling held a burning stick but kept looking around without daring to move. Guk impatiently urged him on.

"If you don't hurry up, I'll crush you!"

Hearing that, the Snotling's ears drooped. Trembling, he stretched the burning stick toward the fuse, his legs ready to run at any moment.

Boom!

The fuse burned faster than expected. Before the Snotling could get away, the jar exploded with a muffled blast, flinging him several meters away as thick black smoke rose.

"Waaagh!"

"Boss is amazing!"

"It worked!"

The boys cheered loudly, but Guk walked over to where the jar had been. He glanced at the shards broken into several pieces, then at the struggling Snotling on the ground, and shook his head.

"The burn efficiency's too low. Too many impurities! No good! Do it again!"

Incomprehensible Mekboy words spilled from Guk's mouth. Under the boys' puzzled gazes, he returned to the workbench. This time, his hands moved even faster than before.

"Boss, does this look good?"

After working for a while, Agum produced a dark yellow powder. It smelled awful. Guk studied it for a moment and decided to let him try it.

Boom!

After a huge blast, the boys came running out of the workshop one after another, blackened and filthy. Guk and several Mekboys came out after them, while Agum had to be dragged out. The stuff he had made was powerful enough, but far too unstable. It exploded the moment it was loaded into the jar, nearly blowing him to pieces.

Still, the stuff was useful, and Guk decided to keep it.

"Boss, this!"

Idea Guy had also made a black powder. It looked rather like gunpowder, but testing showed that it would not explode at all. It burned quickly, however, and that gave Guk an idea. He fiddled around some more and came up with his own new creation.

"Boss, this color... ain't right, is it?"

Agum, with a rag tied around his head, stared at the green grains in the bowl and cautiously voiced his opinion.

"We'll know when we try it! I reckon this is better than gunpowder!"

Guk was full of confidence. He had the Snotlings load it up, then moved everyone farther away.

The boys nervously watched as the Snotlings extended a torch toward the lengthened fuse. As the dazzling spark rapidly approached the mouth of the jar, every Ork held his breath...

Boom~~!

With a thunderous blast, the clay jar shattered into pieces. Flying fragments struck the watching Snotlings, making them howl and scream, while green smoke rose afterward.

"It worked!!!!!!"

Guk raised his fist high, a joyful grin on his face. The boys around him cheered for their boss.

"Go test the cannon!"

This alone was not enough proof. Guk led the Mekboys outside the fortress. Behind them, several White-Helm Guards carried a bronze cannon. It was a field cannon.

"Come on, you know how to use it."

The bounty Guk had offered earlier had actually brought back several Red-Eye Mekboys who had fled before. At the order, they immediately got to work, packing the green grains, stuffing them into the cannon barrel, then loading in a cannonball and ramming it tight with a wooden rod.

"Ready!"

They pierced the powder bag through the touch hole, inserted the primer, tied on the pull cord, and at a sharp shout, every boy fixed his attention on the cannon.

"Fire!"

Boom!

The gun carriage jolted violently and rolled backward on its two wheels. Amid the massive roar, green smoke rose from the muzzle, and a distant sand dune immediately burst into a cloud of dust.

It worked!

The Mekboys all jumped up, and so did Guk. War Fire was now in his hands!

"Boss, look."

At that moment, one of the boys operating the cannon spoke up, breaking the heated mood.

"What's this?"

Guk walked over and saw that a large gash had appeared on the formerly smooth cannon barrel, like an ugly mouth had grown there.

"Barrel burst. This powder's too strong. Same amount, but it hits harder than Shrimp powder."

"Then it's fine. Just use less!"

That did nothing to dampen Guk's mood. He grabbed the last of the green gunpowder and told the boys:

"From now on, this is called Guk's Gunpowder! I'm gonna make the biggest guns! The biggest cannons! Give those Shrimps something to look at!!!!"

"Give them something to look at!!!"

The boys cheered, their laughter echoing across the wilderness...